The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1887-04-09


to say which are the best for a land.
honest poor mon or rich scoundrels?
Distilleries make us rich? Why so
would smuggling, and piracy, and free
booting, Unjust the same way. At first
they would roll in money, and at last
roll in damnation: Here is neigh
borhood with hundred farmers; they
own, on an average, eighty acres
apiece; they are out of debt; if they
lay up no money, they lose none; all
their children go to school; they are at
peace with each other, and happy. A
distillery is built in their midst; they
grow rich and corrupt; churches are
suffered to rot down and school-houses
are used to store grain in; nothing can
stand before their lust of money; they
have sacrificed the conscience in
patronizing a distillery for the sake of
money, and it will not be hard to sacri-
flee conscience in any other way for
the sake of money. They are a greedy,
unprincipled set of farmers scrabbling
to be rich. Let any man say if we
should owe thanks to distilleries for
such riches!-Why, every dollar that
poisons mans honesty is a messen-
ger from the devil sent to bribe him to
do wrong. There are no riches good
for any thing unless there is con-
science, honor, industry, education and
religion. 1t takes men to make n ma
ton; animated money bags can't do 1t.
You must measure a mans heart, not
his money chest, if YOU know his
worth. A nation can afford to have
poor citizens, but not corrupt ones.
Riches at the very best, with all the
guards of patriotism, and refinement,
and religion, are powerful to enervate
the mind and the body. But riches
which begin in immorality-which are
rolled in on the very current of
wickedness, and are seized by men
who have bartered their conscience
and hoodwinked their religion for the
sake of being af1luent-if such riches
are not fire and canker, then God has
not spoken the truth.
1t needs no prophet to foretell what
will be the character of people made
rich across their consciences by the
profits Of distilling. They can not be
temperance men, any more than
wolf can be sheep by putting on his
skin; in becoming Christians they will
get far enough only to become hypo-
critics. Men who know very well be-
forehand what whisky will do to laws,
and yet, for money, open its flood
gates, will not be very stout defenders
of the law against dissipation. A con-
science venal to distilleries has no Writ
lie to resist other proflers. Men who,
unitedly, sustain distilleries against
public good, will separately cheat each
other for theirprivate good. Thus young
men will grow up without nerve to
work, and, with Just nerve enough to
drink; they will be lazy in honesty and
industrious in kn"very. Men will have
too much to do in keeping up courts and
iails to have time to build churches;
and poor-houses will ultimately sup
plant school-houses. The moment a
man sells himself to Mammon he
apostalizes from God; "you can not
serve God and Mammon." Let those
who mediate the sale first take a full
measurement of the slavery. What
place would that be which has no God
but Mammon, and no conscience but
money? Men who begin downward
course by insidious degrees, ought to
know where the road ends which they
descend night and day. What if it
stops abruptly on the precipice of
perdition? Where would one natur-
ally expect that path to end which be-
gins at distillery? What will the
lust step be, when the first step IS
planted upon the PROSTATE forms of
conscience, religion and public goodP
What juggle, what Internal phantasy
has possessed the mind, when public
prosperity is sought for amid the ruins
of integrity, industry, patriotism and
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